One of the largest bank frauds in history has transfixed the entire nation.
The suspect is accused of embezzling $19 billion and causing $41 billion in damages. This is equivalent to approximately 6% of Vietnam’s GDP in 2023.
Vietnam’s top real estate tycoon Truong My Lan faces the possibility of the death penalty.
On Thursday, she and her co-defendants are awaiting sentencing in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with damages estimated at $41 billion (US$27 billion).
Lan, chairman of major development company Van Tinh Phat, is accused of defrauding Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) of cash over a period of more than 10 years.
More than a dozen police cars and vans carrying the defendants arrived at the colonial-era courthouse early in the morning. The list also includes former central bankers, former government officials, and former SCB executives.
After a five-week trial in the business capital of Ho Chi Minh City, Lan and 85 others face verdict and sentencing on charges ranging from bribery and abuse of power to embezzlement and banking law violations.
Lang is suspected of embezzling $19 billion ($12.5 billion), but prosecutors said Thursday that the total losses from the fraud now stand at $27 billion.
She denies the charges and blames her subordinates.
Most of the defendants sat in court Thursday with their heads bowed, but Lunn could be seen fidgeting and looking up from the front row.
Prosecutors are asking that Lan be sentenced to death, which would be an unusually heavy punishment for this type of case.
She and others were arrested as part of a national corruption crackdown that has implicated many of Vietnam’s officials and business elites in recent years.
In her final statement in court last week, Lunn is believed to have said she was considering suicide.
She said she “considered death in despair,” according to state media. “I am very angry at how foolish I was to get involved in this very cutthroat business environment, a banking sector about which I had very little knowledge.”
protests
Hundreds of people began protests in the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City after Lan’s arrest in October 2022, a relatively rare occurrence in the one-party communist state.
Police have identified around 42,000 victims of the scandal that has shocked the Southeast Asian country.
Lan, who is also on trial and is married to a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, is accused of making false loan applications to extract funds from SCB, in which she owned 90% of the shares.
Police said all victims of the scam were SCB bondholders who were unable to withdraw their funds and have not received interest or principal payments since Lan’s arrest.
Prosecutors said during the trial that they had seized more than 1,000 properties belonging to Mr. Lan.
Authorities also said the $5.2 million that Lan and some SCB bankers allegedly passed to state officials to cover up the bank’s violations and poor financial standing was the largest bribe ever recorded in Vietnam. said.
During the trial, the woman who was bribed, former head of the National Bank of Vietnam’s inspection team, Do Thi Nhan, received cash in a Styrofoam box from SCB’s former CEO Bo Thanh Van. He said he was handed a.
According to state media, Niang refused to take the box after realizing it contained cash, but Van refused to take it home.
Since 2021, more than 4,400 people have been charged in more than 1,700 cases in Vietnam’s anti-corruption crackdown.
Do Anh Dung, head of Vietnam’s top luxury real estate mogul, Tan Hoang Minh Group, has been found guilty of defrauding thousands of investors in a $355 million bond scam. Last month, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
